Useless
by Realm-Leaper
Summary: Roy Mustang has been called useless many times in his life.


**Okay, so this story was originally written back when I first started writing on FFN, and had no idea how anything worked, or really had any idea how to write** ** _well_** **. Also, it was majorly non-canon, which is something I usually tend to hate in fandom unless it's something like a theory or a longer fic. So, I've decided to rewrite it and update it into something that I, personally, think is much better. To those that liked the original version, sorry, but this isn't really all that different from it. It's got the same idea.  
**

 **Also, be noted that there are some implications of non-con in here and some language. Yes, language. That's why it's rated T, anyhow, the mentions are very vague, just mentioned enough to understand what happened, nothing more. Nothing explicit, etc. That's why this is rated T and not M, because there is literally nothing explicit in here at all. Still, I thought I would mention that just to let y'all know.  
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 **A/N: Apparently, since writing and posting on a site literally called "Fanfiction" does not make it obvious that this is fanfiction, here's a little secret for y'all. *whisper*** ** _I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist._** **Yes, big surprise there. But anyhow, for all you who actually take the time and money to bother trying to sue us writers for exploring our imagination in your conveniently pre-made world, and playing with your characters created with your blood sweat and tears and not ours, there's the disclaimer. Go find someone else to troll.**

* * *

Roy Mustang has been called useless many times in his life, but most of all by himself.

The first time was when he was a mere five years old, a child by all rights. He watched as the world burned, his parents screaming in their home built upon a hill and sturdy like a coffin. When it collapsed upon them one night as he watched it burn to cinders, he was called useless for the first time.

 _"Honestly, they shouldn't have bothered getting a useless thing as you out first. You're just a bastard child of Mr. Mustang's from a foreign fling in his youth, he shouldn't have taken you in in the first place. Now they and their real child are dead."_

It wasn't just Mr. and Mrs. Mustang and their baby girl that died that night. Slowly, Roy felt a part of him turn cold and fade away behind the pain and anger in his heart at being called a _bastard_ , a _thing_ , _useless_. Later, when that pain turned to hurt and that anger turned to rage, people would call him other names.

* * *

The second time he was called useless was in the hell they called a state orphanage. There, he was weird, foreign, odd. In the wake of political tension between Amestris and the other nations, he was the outlet for the warden and the older children who actually understood what was happening. Roy became the punching bag of those who had heard the horrors that were being committed in other lands, the murders and gunfights and deaths that somehow in the hate-filled minds were racked up on a little boy who'd already been blamed for the death of his _not_ -family.

But perhaps the children were even worse than the hate and scorn from the adults and older teens. For while those elder to him understood moderation and self-control, children did not. Adults could rationalize and understand that there would be consequences if he was hurt - so they could take measures to not hurt him _to much._

But children could not. They taunted him when he tripped over the too-large donation shoes, they laughed when he awoke screaming in the night, the image of flames and the screams of his _not_ -parents burned into his memory, they beat him when he failed at writing with his _right_ hand. Roy was quieter and smaller than most children his age, and nothing he was able to do was enough to get them to stop. Fight back, and they beat him twice as back. Speak out against the taunts and lies, and they turned into a mob, biting and pulling and kicking and yelling at him, telling him how much of a freak he was.

 _"You're nothing. Just a pathetic, useless freak. You are nothing, and never will be anything more than nothing."_

Slowly, Roy learned to stay in the shadows, to stay silent when they hurt him, to write with his _right_ hand, to force back the cries of pain and bite back the humiliation.

Soon after he turned eleven, he slipped out one night with nothing more than a knapsack full of scavenged food and a kitchen knife. He never looked back.

* * *

The third time he was called useless was the day he lost everything. Roy had been living on the streets for over three months now, trying to keep his stomach full in any way that he could. When a thug pulled him aside one day and asked if he'd help raid a small food stall on the corner of the square, he agreed.

It was a disaster. The city that he was staying in was large enough to house many criminals of all types, and in result the people of the city had learned to defend themselves. Roy tripped and knocked over pot in a vender's stall when he was supposed to be sneaking up on the food stall, and it all went downhill from there. The men and Roy were chased from the square with knives and guns, and the thugs lost three men that day.

The leader, who'd been the one to hire him, smacked him so hard that his ears rang, and yelled.

 _"Useless! I gave you one simply job, and you got three of my men killed because you're so useless."_

Then his eyes changed, going dark. Roy felt dread pool in his stomach. The leader grabbed hold of his arm before he could run away, and grinned.

 _"There's only one use for a welp like you."_

Later on, when the blood had dried and Roy was left in the dark crying for an innocence he'd barely ever had, people would say that that was the day he become a monster.

How little did they know.

According to the words of those who'd called him useless, he'd been a monster all along.

* * *

Roy wasn't called useless again until he enrolled in the army. There, at the academy, he was mocked and taunted by the teachers and the students a like for barely being able to read and write, and even then he wrote with his _wrong_ hand.

 _"How can a boy who'd nearly grown not know how to read? Honestly, Mustang, you're so useless. I don't know why you bother with trying to graduate, you should just give up like the pathetic thing you are."_

 _Pathetic._ They didn't even know how right they were. Roy was older now, nearly fourteen years old if the date he put on his application was correct. He knew it wasn't. But he was supposed to be almost grown, almost a man, almost able to completely shut away the pain and the hurt and shame. So Roy took the taunts and laughter with a bitter smile and a growing pain in his heart. He studied hard, learned how to write with the right hand, and pushed himself. For the first time in his life, he had a purpose to strive for, and he was going to reach it.

Not reaching it would tell the man who'd found him outside his not-family's burning that he was right, Roy was nothing but a bastard, a waste. That those who tormented him at the orphanage were correct, that he was nothing. That he deserved what he got just because he dared to breathe the same air as those god-blessed Amestrians with their pale hair and pale skin and pale eyes.

But worst of all, it would tell the man in that alley who'd taken away his innocence, his childhood, his humanity that night that he was _right_ , because a monster, a thing, a useless thing did not deserve a say in who or what decided that he was a plaything for their black hearts.

And to Roy, that was unthinkable. So he tried. He tried _so damn hard_ , he begged lessons from an alchemist in the summer when the all the cadets were sent home, and after he graduated, he managed to track down the elusive Berthold Hawkeye, and somehow managed to convince the man to teach him the finer points of alchemy. After he'd learned as much as the man would teach him, he enrolled in the army.

He made it out of one nightmare only to be thrust into the next.

* * *

In Ishval, a monster was refined. What had merely been hate and pain were solidified and molded into rage and vengeance, vengeance against the wrongs that had been done to a little boy for nothing more than living. Vengeance against those that had dared to step in his way, dared to slow his path of becoming this.

The Flame Alchemist. The Demon of Ishval. The Hero of Amestris.

The monster who killed not tens, not hundreds, not thousands - _millions_. Maybe even hundreds of millions. With the snap of his finger and the cursed red stone that had been gifted him upon arriving to Ishval, he could burn an entire city. He could turn hundred of thousands of people into ash and bone _just like that_ , and yet he could not save his own. Time after time, they were caught in the crossfire. Time after time, men threw themselves in front oh him to protect the _weapon_ that would supposedly offer Amestris victory. Time after time, those left behind cursed him to the depths of hell for being such a tool, such a monster, such a weapon.

 _"You left my brother to die! My friend gave his life for you! You destroy cities and men and women and children, you monster, but you're so useless you can't save your own men!"_

Roy believed them, for nothing could drown out the screams of his victims, his comrades, his people, that he heard every night in his sleep and every waking hour in his mind. So he believed them, for what reason do the dead have to lie?

Yes, in Ishval no monster was created. Roy Mustang was and always had been a monster according to those that saw him, that really saw him. He was a beast of flame and death, bringing chaos upon the earth like no human ever could, for a monster could not feel, and therefore could not feel remorse for killing those who dared stand against him.

Roy clamped a hand over his mouth at night so they would not hear him cry.

* * *

After Ishval, there was no peace. Roy went from being the _Hero of Amestris_ to being the youngest lieutenant-colonel ever, a mere twenty three years old when he'd climbed the ranks. He was forced into duty at the eastern command, wearing the badges of Civil War Veteran and The Flame Alchemist upon his body while the interior of his resolve to win had crumbled to dust. Roy no longer wanted to rise above those that had called him useless, for he'd seen the truth.

He was useless. He may be the hero that had brought the end to the bloody civil war that had been raging for years, he may be the only one to whom Berthold Hawkeye had ever bestowed the secrets of his flame alchemy to, but in the end he was still the same child that watched as his parent's house became their coffin, the same boy who'd walked with his eyes permanently sealed to the ground in an orphanage closer to hell than the very depths of East City, the same boy that had watched his innocence and childhood ripped from him and never return.

He watched as his comrades went along with their daily lives, he watched as the only friend he'd ever managed to make somehow found peace and married and went on living, he watched as the only woman he'd ever been able to look in the eye without seeing the face of his _not_ -mother got a dog and remained the same as she'd always been - human.

Slowly, Roy felt the monster that had been unleashed in Ishval shrinking, and the pain returning. With every night terror that haunted him and every time he hit the ground when a car backfired or a book dropped, he felt the guilt returning to consume him whole as the anger and rage that fueled him before to _win win win_ was forgotten.

And from then on, it was he himself who called Roy Mustang useless.

* * *

Riza Hawkeye was the next to call him useless. She reprimanded him for running into action with a smirk on his face and false confidence in his step, telling him off in front of the Elrics and his entire crew. Roy may have rode it out with a grin upon his lips, but in his gut he felt the same shame and humiliation rising that had dogged him since that night in the alley.

 _"You should have known better, Sir. You're useless in the rain."_

It may have been meant as a joke to his crew and the Elric brothers and maybe even herself to lighten the mood after such a dangerous attack, but to Roy it was like a splash of cold water snapping him out of what momentary peace he'd had with the daily routine of a smug, confident colonel he'd taken on.

Later that evening he hid in his apartment with a bottle of whiskey and immersed himself in the case, trying to block out the screams of his _not_ -parents, the taunts and jeers of cruel children and cruel men, the cries a little boy in a dark alley, the smell of burning flesh, the pain of everyone healing and him still holding on, still haunted. Still the same monster that had been sent out like divine punishment on the Ishvalans, still the same monster that massacred men, women, and children without mercy nor feeling nor pain.

* * *

The last time Roy Mustang called himself useless was the day the monster named _The Flame Alchemist_ died.

He was blinded by Truth, pinned down in a transmutation circle by the embodiment of Wrath and told to open the gate of knowledge by a man, a being, a monster like him who called himself Father. He watched moments before as his men, his hope, and his lieutenant bled out on the ground. But Truth had not granted him the gift of death that was the penalty for any human committing such a crime as resurrection, for Roy Mustang was not a human. Instead, Truth took his sight and in turn took his ability to hope.

Izumi was the one who found him when Truth released him, stumbling about in the dark, hands stained once more with blood.

"Colonel?" She asked. Roy flinched at her voice, head swinging wildly around, trying to find her.

"Why is it so dark?" He demanded.

This time, it was Elric who answered. His voice sounded confused. "It's not."

Roy felt the blood drain from his face. "Elric."

"Yes?"

"Shine a light near my face."

Heat flared near his face, but the darkness remained without even a glimmer of light. Roy felt dread pool in his stomach once more. "No." He raised trembling hands to tangle in his hair, tugging downwards. "No! I can't live like this, I can't - I can't be this... I can't, I can't, I can't -"

A soft hand settled on his shoulder, and Roy flinched. "You will live. That is our only focus right now."

Roy felt a sob rise in his throat, and forced it back. "No! I can't... I can't protect them like this." Roy Mustang was not a human - he was a monster. Monsters didn't deserve protecting, but so help him if he failed another one of _his_ people. "I'm _useless_ like this."

Izumi gave a soft sigh. "You love your people, correct?"

Roy's hands stopped yanking on his hair. "Y-Yes. Of course I do." He loved his people. Without them, he was nothing. Useless. A monster haunted by the loss of everything that ever meant something to him.

 _I will not loose it again._

"Then _live_ for them."

Roy remembered the screams of his parents as their house fell upon them, the flames that consumed them and their child. He remembered the taunts and beatings the children and wardens of the orphanage had given him, simply for being different. He remembered the dark alley, the blood, and the shame and humiliation that followed. He remembered the glares of teachers and students a like at the academy when he failed again and again pathetically. He remembered the smell of burnt flesh and the sounds of screaming children and the red glare of flames as cities burned. He remembered the hollow feeling of watching his friends and enemies grow and heal and move on while he stayed in the same place, haunted by memory and reality alike. He remembered the shame rising in his gut when Riza, his Riza, one of his precious people, called him useless.

And Roy Mustang grit his teeth, and stood.

Even if he was useless, he would still stand, for them, to protect his precious people. Without them, he was nothing. Without them, he truly was the demon, the monster that haunted his dreams and invaded his thoughts.

But useless was not worthless, so Roy Mustang would stand and fight.


End file.
